EC: Romania has made progress in AML measures

Romania's progress report adopted in the Plenary Session of the Moneyval committee, held in Strasbourg and published on the EC website on October 17, highlights the efforts made by Romania with regard to preventing and combating money laundering and financing of terrorism acts. "The evaluators were impressed by the evolution of the ONPCSB (National Office for Prevention and Control of Money Laundering) regarding the risk-based supervision approach, which is currently in the implementation start-up stage. This is expected to come in support of conducting more supervisions, which will lead to a higher efficiency," the Moneyval report reads. According to experts, there is still some work to be done on correspondent banks, third parties, to archiving, reporting suspicious transactions, protection and transmission of confidential information, internal controls, sanctions, branches and subsidiaries of foreign companies, regulation, supervision and monitoring, incrimination of financing terrorism, freezing and confiscating assets used for terrorism purposes, reporting suspicious transactions in this area, assessment in terms of financing terrorism of non-profit organizations and declarations upon crossing the border.
The main amendments and completions to the Romanian legislation by approving GEO no. 53/2008 are related to the strict definition of the concepts of "real beneficiary", "linked operations", "shell bank", "third parties", "external transfer", "politically exposed persons" and the establishment of new provisions/ obligations for the reporting entities. Similarly, the reporting threshold was raised from 10,000 euro to 15,000 euro for cash transactions and external transfers in and from accounts, in connection with the "know your customer" standards and the reporting obligations.

An important progress was made in the non-financial field, in terms of organising casinos and exchanges houses, as the Romanian authorities decided their monitoring and verification by the Financial Guard, taking into account that the currency exchange form is a fiscal document.

Source: Curierul National